Señor Torpedo

Found this on facebook but reposting to SAVE A LIFE.

Or at least some of y’all’s GPAs.

also, use Unpaywall

Re: blorbo from my research, here is my favorite ever case study. I'm obsessed with it.

Summary:

- Guy presents to neurology with muscle issues, very clearly has something going on but diagnostic tests are inconclusive

- History is mostly unremarkable. Key word, mostly. He drinks four liters of plain Earl Grey tea per day. For context this is nearly twice the recommended daily fluid intake. All fluids, to be clear, not just tea. He only drinks tea tho

- Bergamot is known to be phototoxic in high doses (reacts badly on your skin with sunlight)

- APPARENTLY nobody previously has consumed enough of it for it to be widely known that it is also, apparently, mildly toxic to ingest in high doses

But don't take my word for it, comrade Rudolf Nilsen said it best:

"[He] had announced to the public that The Asylum will be his last book. We must allow ourselves to hope that he will live long - long enough to see the blessed fruits of this heroic decision "

your first concert

your last concert

your next concert

My parents threw away all of these things (even the vacuum cleaners and the dryer) when they got too dirty to function, because no one even told them THAT they could be cleaned. Cost them thousands of dollars over the years.

All I'm saying is that cleaning is not intuitive, and not knowing how to clean is not a moral failing, but it is something you can learn.

I like this video because it does a great job of introducing the basic foundations of house cleaning (and because he doesn't use bleach, which is a common allergy in addition to being awful to inhale). He also talks a little about how to clean a vacuum. And why you shouldn't put grease from your pots and pans down the sink drain. I also love that he mentions that different houses and different people have different needs and different versions of what clean and cleaning looks like.

This is another video from the same guy about cleaning and depression. This advice, especially at the beginning, can feel really really difficult and oppressive to hear. However, I find that it's generally pretty solid. But I'm autistic and so is he, so that gets a massive Your Mileage May Vary stamp on it.

I have a favorite part of this video. It's from 10:52 to 12:36. I think we could all use to hear that. There's a HEFTY pause after that one. I promise the narration does come back.

This is a pair of videos about how to correctly load and use a dish washer.

The first one is a quick 1 minute 30 second overview on loading. I can't find the exact video I'm looking for, so consider this a substitute for that. If I can find the one I'm looking for, I'll swap it in.

Here's a blog post about scrubbing brushes and how to clean them.

And a video for all cleaning tools, including scrub brushes. This video does use bleach. I'll try to find some alternatives to that.

How to clean a top loader (without the removable agitator thing). This should be done every 1-3 months depending on you unit, or every time you wash really soiled clothes.

How to clean a top loader (with the removable agitator thing). This should be done every month, or every time you wash really soiled clothes.

This video is for pet owners.

These carpet brushes are a LIFE SAVER if you have dogs. This thing allows me to go from vacuuming about 4 square feet before my vacuum is full to vacuuming half the living room (I don't vacuum often enough. You should vacuum weekly, and I just can't.). I have to unclog the vacuum less often. It fluffs up some of the flat spots in the carpet. And I also use the brush to shampoo my rugs in the spring.

A spot cleaner (or a carpet cleaner with a spot cleaner attachment) is another life saver, ESPECIALLY if you can afford to splurge on a heated one. I see them at Goodwill or at yard sales occasionally, and they're worth picking up. The shark one in the video is great too.

It's America's Housekeeping Book (1941). Available for free download on the Internet Archive. (Large PDF file at the link here).

The LISTS y'all. The step by step lists. The emphasis on efficiency and arranging spaces for the least resistance possible. The basic concept of "take a tray or basket into a room when you are tidying up so you can put things that belong elsewhere on it and take them out LATER in ONE GO".

In my writing, I have sometimes alluded to my not experiencing empathy, specifically what psychologists call affective empathy, or popularly understood as “feeling someone else’s feelings.”

(You can contrast this with cognitive empathy, also known as perspective-taking, which involves thinking consciously about how another person feels, or with compassion, which is consciously choosing to show people consideration with your actions. More on both of these later).

Whatever that intuitive magic is that allows other people to gaze at a person’s face or body language and feel in an instant what they might be feeling, I don’t have it. When something tragic or unexpected happens to a person that I care about, I can seem baffled by their reactions and indifferent at first. It takes me time to really appreciate what they must be going through. Moving through the world, I’m often emotionally adrift and without much sense of whether another person understands me, is offended by me, or might be quietly asking me for something.

“Autistics do have empathy!” is theprotest of many Autistic self-advocates when our collective humanity is called into question by the RFK Jr’s of the world. “In fact, some studies show that we are emotionally overwhelmed by empathizing too much!” And certainly, it can be valuable to correct misconceptions — but only when doing so doesn’t uplift the same ableist, neuro-conformist standards that keep us oppressed and protesting for our lives.

While it is true that some Autistics can hold a job, write a poem, play baseball, and yes, feel empathy, the fact remains that many in our community cannot and never will — and it is those Autistics who are considered the least human under an ableist regime.

Our humanity must be defended along some lines other than our supposed similarity to neurotypicals. We must be held as valuable even when we cannot feel what others expect us to feel, even when we lack some quality that everyone has been told is essential to humanity. Autistics, in all our facets, are human beings, including in our lack. And the research shows that a significant number of us lack either cognitive or affective empathy.

I am one of them. And I am not alone.

Not having empathy has meant missing a lot of meaningful social data, accidentally hurting people constantly, and lacking a cornerstone of human connection that many see as foundational to expressing love or even human decency. It has not been easy. It makes me see myself as downright inhuman at times. But like Carmen and so many other low-empathy Autistics, I’ve had to try my best work around it. Here are some of the strategies that Autistics use to cope with our lack of empathy:

Intense Moral Scrupulosity

Jacob is in his late twenties, and was diagnosed as Autistic as a child. He grew up repeatedly being told that he couldn’t comprehend other people or socialize normally, and was heavily trained in social skills and emotional reciprocity by a legion of care providers, school psychologists, and therapists. One of the results of all this is a profound mistrust in himself.

Jacob says, “As a kid, every time I interacted with a non-special-ed kid, I could feel all the eyes on me, people holding their breath, waiting for me to screw up. As an adult, every bad date that I had or bad job interview, my parents would always say well, what did you say wrong? What did you miss?”

To cope with all his guilt and uncertainty, Jacob sought an anchor in evangelical Christianity. He joined a local megachurch when he was seventeen, and became obsessive about serving God and always behaving ‘correctly.’ He distanced himself from friends who drank and smoked weed, threw out all of his favorite books and DVDs that were filled with ‘sinful’ material, placed harsh browsing blocks on his phone and computer, and policed his thoughts for any inklings of cruelty, criminality, or sex.

“I needed to know how to be a good person,” he explains. “And here there were people offering rules on how to be a good person.”

Autistic people are generally known to be highly consistent in how we apply moral or ethical rules to a wide variety of situations, very sensitive to perceived rule violations, willing to sacrifice social acceptance in order to express what we value, and a lot of us wind up developing obsessive-compulsive qualities. There are probably a lot of reasons why this happens, but one of the most frequently suggested ones is that reducing the world to a narrow set of rules helps to make life manageable when you are consistently overwhelmed. If you’re a bottom-up processor in a sea of excessive, unpredictable stimuli, knowing what to focus in on helps.

Obsessively Studying Human Behavior

My inability to recognize & connect with other people’s emotions was part of what drove me to become a social psychologist.

By the time I was in high school, it was clear to me that other people were communicating on a wavelength inaudible to me: A classmate would pointedly tell me It looks like somebody got a haircut and I’d respond with a deadpan Yes, I did, then be laughed at. A teacher would take me aside and tell me that one of my classmates was falling behind on their papers and I’d reply, Oh really, that’s not good, not understanding I was being told to help. It felt as if I was constantly being thrown a rope and dropping it to the floor.

I tried to fill the gaps in my understanding as scientifically as possible, by reading a ton of popular psychology books (of dubious quality). I became obsessed with documenting and analyzing everything about a person’s mannerisms, tone of voice, word choice, and expressions. I studied handwriting analysis, nonverbal gestures, lie detection, attachment strategies, love languages, and active listening.

Over-helping and People-Pleasing

Jewyl is a nonbinary Autistic person who is so afraid that their lack of empathy might make them inconsiderate that they have over-corrected wildly in the opposite direction — forever showering the people around them with praise, attention, acts of service, and gifts. They describe this tendency as compulsive, and say it’s negatively affected their life and relationships a lot.

“I bring my roommate all this food home from my work and I buy all the toiletries and cleaning supplies, I clean the bathroom and the living areas, when she travels I take care of her dog and bird for free, and I buy her a lot of Magic: The Gathering card packs and bring her home lots of new games.”

The reason for this? Ten years ago, Jewyl was kicked out of their housing by a roommate that said they were oblivious to the huge messes of food waste and craft supplies that they made. They have been dropped by numerous friend groups for being too ‘annoying’ and only ever wanting to talk about their own special interests, too, and their family calls them inconsiderate. They never want to risk letting people down again. So they try to make themselves as useful as humanely possible.